Amateur historian unearths Nazi battery

An amateur British military historian has unearthed a vast underground Nazi gun battery complex thought to have caused carnage during the D-Day landings.

Gary Sterne, 43, discovered the huge "Maisy Battery" after he found a crinkled map which fell out of an old pair of US serviceman's trousers at a military memorabilia fair in Stockport.

It turned out to be an invasion map for Omaha Beach, which included an area marked "area of high resistance". Mr Sterne, a publisher and collector, believed that this could show the "lost" Nazi gun emplacements, which became buried by nature after the war and could not be located.

Experts were divided about the battery's location and most believed that the area where Mr Sterne was looking was nothing but fields. But after travelling to Normandy to search for himself he stumbled across an entrance to the complex in undergrowth.